


growth

by StrayLiger



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:55:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrayLiger/pseuds/StrayLiger
Summary: He wouldn’t want to be anyone else, anywhere else.
Relationships: Christina Sierra/Lichtendahl Tsery
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15





	growth

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my drafts probably since the beginning of the year, longer probably, and I just stumbled upon it so I thought why the hell not? Work has been leeching all of the joy and creative energy out of my life so it feels good to publish something
> 
> Anyway, this is just a little piece about Lichty because he got robbed of an actual character arc. Enjoy!

_ I never knew if I was half alive or half dead. _

Lichty has never felt closer to dying than he does now. It’s the second time, he manages to think, the second time he finds himself drifting in space, a sliver of flesh, a memory of a human, hanging onto life by a hair thin thread. This is it, though. He knows this time no help will arrive in time, no one will move heaven and earth to rebuild his body. This is it.

And yet, he feels no pain-something must be damaged, something mechanical inside what’s left of his body, and he feels no pain, but he feels life draining out slowly, his consciousness slipping away, the darkness closing in. 

“I am so foolish” Christina says, and her words reach his ears slowly, as if the noise was moving underwater, but the way the emotion makes her voice crack is perfectly noticeable as she wraps her arms around what’s left of Lichty. “I was blind. I had such a cool guy right in front of me, and I didn’t see it…”

Lichty smiles. Warmth floods his chest, and he knows it’s all in his head because there’s nothing in there that could make him warm anymore, and he’s lost enough blood to make him cold as a corpse.

His body is shutting down. Quite literally, too: like a machine powering down after losing its source of power, he feels his organs beginning to stop inside the remains of his artificial torso. Only his heart, his spine and his lungs are natural: a doctor had explained this once to him. The advances in regenerative medicine have their limitations. Regrowing organs wasn’t impossible, but a whole body, four limbs, was out of the question. Technically, he should have died then. It was a miracle for a person to have lost so much of his body and to still live. 

And a family? Could you regrow one of those?

Doctors in mint colored scrubs, blinding white lights, metallic clicks and whirring noises. Months spent in a bed. Months of rehabilitation. Relearning to be a person. More doctors.

The memory is so distant it feels like it belongs to someone else. 

And maybe it does: maybe whoever he was before half his body got vaporized is dead. Maybe he’s a completely different person now. 

But that isn’t bad. He wouldn’t want to be anyone else, anywhere else, because Chris is there with him, and that’s all that matters.

His heart beats one time, then another one, almost apologetically.  _ This is it _ .

“Yeah” he manages to croak.”I suppose you were…”

He closes his eyes. 

He’s never felt as alive as he does now, when he’s dying.


End file.
